Needing a Friend Side Story: The Start of Team 7
by xXSaSuHiNaXx
Summary: This is a one-shot of how Hinata ended up on Team 7 and her first meeting with her teammates. Just a side story to my story Needing a Friend. Rated T just to be safe. R


"Hinata, please sit down."

Hinata nodded her head at her leader and sat at the chair in the middle of the room. Minato Namikaze, the leader of Konohagakure, sat behind his desk while his wife, Kushina Uzumaki, stood beside her husband, hands clasped in front of her.

Hinata gripped the side of the chair tightly, knowing what she had been called in for. It was about her latest mission, which had ended with three members short when she had come back.

"I'm sure you've realized already what this is about?"

Hinata nodded her head stiffly, her eyes staring at the wooden floor like it was the most interesting thing in the world. She just couldn't meet her superior's eyes.

"Relax, I'm not angry with you," he told her.

Even though he said that, she still couldn't bring herself to calm down. After all, this wasn't the first time that she had come back with a few members short. Though she had completed her mission, three of the members of her team had been killed. All because they hadn't listened to her.

It wasn't her fault, she knew. But that's not what everyone else thought, which only caused trouble to Minato, as he always seemed to take her side. And that only made the villagers angry. After all, if you side with the devil, or in this case a demon, showed you either follow the demon.

"Listen, Hinata. A lot of the villagers are becoming concerned and want something done about it. As the Hokage, it's my job to calm and help the people. And I know that you'll probably not like this, but I've decided..."

Hinata closed her eyes and her heart tightened within her chest, beating rapidly; painfully. It was obvious what he was going to say. It was what many people wanted but couldn't do themselves because they were either too weak, or something always stopped them. Now they were going to get their wish, Minato could no longer help her. He was the Hokage, and the Hokage's job was to help the people.

They were going to execute her, weren't they? That's what the people wanted, after all. She had known that it would come sooner or later, she had just hoped it was later. She didn't want to die yet; there was still many things that she would have liked to do. But if she was, she just hoped that Minato would at least find another suitable vessel for Kurama.

So at least he could be happy.

Minato sighed and shuffled through some papers on his desk. He leaned his head on his left hand and massaged his temple with his middle finger. It was obvious he was stressed out. Kushina stepped behind Minato and placed her hands on his shoulders, massaging them. Minato lifted his head up and looked at his wife, a strained smile on his face. "Thanks."

The redhead nodded her head at him and smiled. "Tell her," she ushered.

The man gave another sigh and set the paper back on his desk. He looked at Hinata and frowned, knowing that she was scared. If anything, it was he who should be scared. After all...

"Hinata, look at me."

Slowly and hesitantly Hinata lifted her head to let the blonde see her face. She was trying to hide it, hide her sadness from him. But he could still see it. He had known her long enough to know when something was troubling her. Even when she put up that mask of hers.

Minato groaned, not liking this one bit. He just hoped that after this, no one would get hurt.

"Hinata Hyuga, heiress to the Hyuga clan, a Jonin of Konoha, I'm sorry to tell you this but... you have been demoted back to Genin rank."

Hinata blinked, and blinked, and then blinked some more. She had not been expecting that. Surely there was something else.

And there was.

"As you know, all Genins are required to be placed in a team of two other Genins, and to be led by a Jonin. A four-man squad. But since you do not have a team of your own, you will be placed into a new team. The team will consist of two newly graduated students from the academy and a Jonin. You're teammates will be..." he paused, wishing to stall this for as long as he could.

Oh how he wished this wasn't so.

"...Sasuke Uchiha, second son of Fugaku and Mikoto Uchiha, and Naruto Namikaze, son of the Hokage and Kushina Uzumaki. You're Jonin leader will be Kakashi Hatake, a former ANBU member."

At that moment, Minato did his own version of a face-desk. He just hoped that the villagers knew what they had done. He couldn't change it anymore. It was official.

They were all doomed.

.

.

.

Minato lifted his head when he heard nothing and looked at Hinata. She had turned into an ice-block. Well that was unexpected... He had thought that she would have yelled and hit the wall, or maybe even thrown the chair she was sitting on out the window or something. Sure that was pretty uncharacteristic for her, but with who she was paired up with, he wouldn't have been surprised.

His son Naruto and Hinata were on a team. Naruto and Hinata. The two pretty much hated each other.

Minato stared at her, waiting for her to react. Her eyebrow twitched, her eyes began to brighten once more. She looked like she was finally coming back. And now, she was registering the information.

Registering...

Registering...

Registering complete...

Hinata fainted.

* * *

The halls were empty, everyone was most likely in their classrooms now, most talking about the new graduates. Noises of excitement rang loud from a couple of the doors Hinata passed by, babbling about who had passed and how great a ninja they were going to be. And there were a few girls who were talking about impressing their crushes.

Hinata tuned it all out, not really caring. She had once been like them, excited to become a ninja. She remembered feeling like jumping up and down in joy, but not doing so because she was too shy. I had passed, was all that went through her mind, and she had been the youngest in the class, too.

The blunette smiled, those were the happy times, she guessed. Now that she was back in the academy, going through the same thing again, she was indifferent. She didn't really care. She knew what a true ninja was, what they did and what they became.

She had been a true ninja.

Now, there wasn't really much she could be excited about. All that happened in her missions, after she had become a Chunin and then Jonin, was lots of killing. Killing, killing, and even more killing. Even when she was a Genin, there was still killing.

Whether it was on her side or the other, there was killing.

It wasn't the greatest life like a lot of the kids thought it was. If anything, it was hell. Or maybe that was her? Well, no matter. She was used to it now. She only wondered how her new team and the others would fare after seeing what real shinobi did.

Hinata opened the door to the classroom that her two teammates were to be in and walked in. As soon as the door opened, silence fell upon the class, probably wondering if she was their sensei.

Disappointment shown in the kids' faces when they saw it was only another student, or so they thought. Though some, she could see, looked a little suspicious. Before Hinata could walk further into the class, a loud and obnoxious voice rang out, hurting her eardrums.

"It's you! What are you doing here?"

Hinata delicately touched her ears, which felt like they would bleed any moment. "Nice to see you too, Namikaze-san."

The boy, clad in orange and blue, ran down to her and gawked, pointing an accusing finger at her. "W-What? How? I thought you already graduated! Wait, are you our sensei or something?"

The blunette's eyebrow twitched, partly from the blonde and partly from all the whispers going around. Everyone was staring at the two now, probably wondering who the hell she was and why the Hokage's son knew her.

"Hokage-sama, my recent teammates were KIA, yes I have, and no, I'm not your sense," Hinata answered simply.

"Then what are you doing here? And wait, your teammates died?" Naruto inquired, taking a baby step back.

Hinata sighed, why was she paired up with this doofus? Couldn't she get someone more... bearable? Minato knew that the two fought a lot, so why did he have to put her with him? Hopefully, this Sasuke Uchiha wasn't like the boy standing in front of her.

Then again, it was because of him that she was spared her life, so she should be thankful, she guessed.

"Hey Naruto, who's that?" came a deep voice.

The two looked up at the voice to see Sasuke Uchiha, though Hinata didn't know who he was at that time. The girl's eyebrow twitched again, seeing that everyone wanted to know as well.

"Oh, Sasuke. Hey! This is Hinata, she's a close friend of my mom and dad... I think. Though I'm not sure why she's here. Last time I checked, she was a Chunin," Naruto replied.

"I was a Jonin," Hinata corrected.

"Whatever!"

"Hey, how old are you?" 'Sasuke' questioned suspiciously, doing a once over of her.

"Twelve," Hinata answered simply.

"Twelve?! And your a Jonin?!" most of the class yelled, unbelieving.

"I don't believe you. There's no way you could be a Jonin at your age. You're lying," Sasuke accused.

Hinata shrugged, if he didn't believe that she was telling the truth then what did she care. And anyway, she never said that she was a Jonin now, she had only said that she was the last time she and Naruto met up. He was only making assumptions.

The door opened and everyone turned to look who it was. A woman with wavy black hair and red eyes stood in the doorway, looking into the room. Her eyes landed on Hinata and narrowed, looking at her suspiciously.

"You're Hinata, right? What are you doing here, you're supposed to be on a mission, aren't you?" she questioned, putting her hands on her hips.

The blunette just stared at the woman. Who was she? Hinata didn't know. She didn't really even care. But somehow, she felt like she should at least know her name. After all, the woman knew hers. "I'm already done with my mission. As for why I'm here, I was demoted to Genin so that I could be watched over by a trusted Jonin."

The woman gave a small nod, though still looked wary. "Anyway," she started, turning to the class. "My name is Kurenai Yuhi and I'm the sensei of Squad 8. Will Kiba Inuzuka, Shino Aburame, and Sakura Haruno please follow me."

Immediately, three students stood and followed along their sensei as she left the room. Another sensei came in, introduced himself, and told his students to follow him. Though before he left, he gave Hinata wary looks.

Three by three the students left before finally, it was only Hinata, Sasuke, and Naruto in the room. After everyone had left, Hinata decided to sit in one of the front rows, waiting patiently for her sensei to come. On the other side of the room, in the front row sat Naruto and Sasuke, with Naruto twitching impatiently and Sasuke resting his head on the desk.

Finally, after waiting for so long, Naruto stood and pulled a chair over to the door, where he proceeded to set up a trap for their sensei. Hinata just sighed at the blonde, while Sasuke voiced his doubts of their sensei falling into the trap.

But he was proven wrong when their sensei did in fact, fall into the trap.

Naruto burst out laughing, Sasuke looked questioningly at the man, and Hinata was trying hard not to join Naruto on the floor. And here she thought that he was strong. Or maybe he was just pretending to be weak?

It didn't matter right now.

* * *

"Alright, why don't you introduce yourselves one at a time?" Kakashi said.

"What are we suppose to say?" Naruto asked.

Ah, Hinata remembered this. Though the location was different, this was almost exactly how it went with her first team. Her sensei told the team to introduce themselves, one of the three asked the sensei to go first, the sensei said something about themselves, and then the students went next. She was going through this all over again.

"Things you like, things you hate, dreams for the future, hobbies, things like that," Kakashi explained.

"Why don't you start first. Tell us something about you so we can see how it's suppose to work," Naruto said.

"Me?" Kakashi asked, pointing to himself.

The two boys nodded.

So he began. "I'm Kakashi Hatake. Things I like and things I hate... I don't feel like telling you that. My dreams for the future... never really thought about it. As for my hobbies, I have lots of hobbies."

Hinata sweat-dropped. They sure learned a lot from that, didn't they?

"Okay, you're turn. You on the right, you go first," Kakashi ordered.

Naruto was all pepped out for it. "Alright, I'm Naruto Namikaze! I like instant ramen and the ramen at Ichiraku Ramen especially. It's the greatest, though I hate having to wait for it. My hobby is eating all kinds of ramen and comparing them, and also pranking people. And my future dream is to be the greatest Hokage ever! Even greater than pops!"

Hinata felt like sighing at that, but smiled instead. She'd never seen anyone as obsessed with ramen as he was. And though there were many that were aspiring to become Hokage, only few were as passionate for the role as Naruto. But it also saddened her slightly. He'd have to through a lot and some more before and after he became Hokage.

Hopefully he was ready for it.

"Alright, next," Kakashi ushered.

"I'm Sasuke Uchiha. I don't like anything sweet, but I do like training and tomatoes. My dream is beat Itachi and become an ANBU leader. As for my hobby, it's training," Sasuke said.

Itachi Uchiha... She had heard of him, as well as met him a couple of times. Previously, when both weren't on missions, he was the one that looked after her, a sort of babysitter who only watched from afar. From what she'd heard, he was a prodigy. An extremely strong shinobi who was said to be even stronger than the present head Uchiha. An Uchiha who, if continued to train like he did, would even be able to catch up to Madara Uchiha, and the guy was on par with the first Hokage!

Like Naruto, the boy would need to have exceptional strength and perseverance. If he didn't, then it wouldn't turn out to be good. Whether he wanted to surpass Itachi or to become an ANBU, he needed talent and willpower.

"Alright, last one," Kakashi looked at her.

"My name is Hinata Hyuga. Things I like and things I don't like... Let's see... Um, I like talking to the Kyubi?" She wasn't sure what to say for that one. She was thinking of putting a food there like the other two members of her squad, but something in her wanted to know what they thought of her response so she chose that instead.

As expected, the two looked dumbly at her, before scooching ever-so-slightly away from her. She hid a smile, deciding to just ignore them and continue on. "As for things I hate, it's garbage."

Kakashi lifted his visible eyebrow and his mask seemed to shift slightly, but he didn't say anything. He seemed to know what she meant by when she had said 'garbage'.

"Well, duh. I'm sure everyone hates garbage. Who would like it anyway?" Naruto questioned.

Hinata pointedly ignored him.

"My hobby is training. As for my future dream, I don't think I have one."

Kakashi nodded his head.

And that was how her new start began.

* * *

**_Hope you enjoyed it! :D_**


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